Description

Fresh-cut, 5/4 red oak (Quercus sp.) boards were weighed, measured to determine volume and then kiln-dried to determine if the initial green density (green weight/green volume) was correlated to the occurrence of honeycomb. A positive relationship was found between the occurrence of honeycomb during drying and the initial green density. These results indicate that it should be possible to use density sorting prior to kiln-drying to segregate boards with a high probability of honeycomb to reduce drying degrade and improve drying efficiency. The higher density boards could be dried with a milder schedule, to reduce honeycomb, and the lower density boards could be dried with an accelerated schedule.